I bet that absolutely nobody apart from me can recall this post I made back in January 2016.
I said that a great New Year’s Resolution was to make sure that 2016 was your busiest year yet.
As far as resolutions go, it’s a good one:
- It’s measurable
- It’s achievable
- It’s probably going to be good for you
- It’s dependent on nothing other than yourself
A lot of people fall into the trap of picking income-related goals or resolutions similar in that there are a lot of outside influences which can affect it. I remember setting an income goal for a business I ran a few years back: The problem with it was that we were in the middle of a massive recession.
How do you set an income goal when businesses are falling to bits and clients are dropping like flies?
Anyway, after that I stopped following the idea of income-related goals.
It’ll go up, down, and change as necessary.
Instead, think about what you can do. You can’t guarantee you’ll get clients, but you can guarantee you’ll pitch to them.
Anyway, that’s a topic from a previous day. We’re out of 2016 and into 2017.
There’s a better chance that you’ll remember my list of goals for 2017 from this post in December.
I figured that there’s no sense in setting goals and then never coming back to them, so here’s my update for January.
Jamie McSloy Site Update: January 2017
It’s been a busy month. In fact, I feel like I’ve done more this month than I did in 2016. (That’s not accurate, but it sure feels it. January 2016 to January 2017 as a comparison… there is no comparison. I’ve accomplished more, done more and worked harder.)
Here are the plain facts from January 2017:
- I prepared to launch a software as a service business. (It goes live tomorrow)
- I sort-of completed Gary Halbert’s 30 Day Copywriting Challenge
- Also, I’ve restructured how I offer my freelance services – that’ll go live in February (I hope)
- I’ve written articles for ten niche sites
- Specifically for this site, I’ve stuck to the one-article-a-day rate
- I launched the Jamie McSloy Newsletter (though didn’t find a better name for it)
- I announced the Secret Island project yesterday
- More stuff that I can’t even remember.
- I upgraded the site (and all my other sites.) SSL, faster loading times, new plugins and other stuff. (This is boring, but I’m adding it to the list because it took a lot longer than I thought.)
As far as goals for the year, it looks ok:
- I didn’t hire anyone – I figure learning paid ads and outsourcing at the same tie is a recipe for blowing all my money
- Again with auction site stuff… financial expansion is good, but not if you do everything at once
- The Niche Site Challenge trundles along at a not-quite-quick-enough pace
- Outside the business: I actually stuck to a workout plan for a whole month (and even expanded on it in a careful and considered way.)
Crucially I did all of this while spending less time at the computer. I had a goal of four hours a day at the start of the month, and I only achieved that on probably one out of three days this month. That said that’s a pretty big achievement and there’s room for improvement. Also, productivity went up, so that’s proof that I do spend too much time doing not a lot on the computer.
What’s Going On In February?
February is going to be an even busier month.
I haven’t concentrated on fiction – or book publishing – for a long time. I plan to rectify that in February.
I’m going to learn about paid advertising and use the software business as a guinea pig.
Updating my freelancing stuff is also something I need to do. I’ll write more about this in the next month, but I’m in a tricky place where I’m kind-of pricing myself out of a lot of what I traditionally do. In January, I’ve taken on new clients for different things and with different pay structures, and I’ve run into issues with other prospective customers on a variety of things. It’s something I need to sit down and think about because I’m juggling multiple projects with very different goals and it all gets messy.
Word count is going to go up for the month: A lot of this month has been admin, planning and tech-related. I haven’t had any big word count days, (10,000+) for a long time. With the focus on publishing and (hopefully – possibly – building some niche sites) books, I’ll look to significantly up my word count this month.
I’m also going to populate The Island with more stuff. On the timeline are some of the things I’ve worked on in the past: language learning made easy, saving tons of money on email marketing and expanding on the travel business ideas that the mailing list got sent last Friday.
(That’s right… I send out business ideas to my mailing list. I gave people four free ones on Friday. If you’re not on the list, you should be.)
Final Thoughts
Let me know if you’re interested in these “Dear Diary” entries. For what it’s worth, I find them personally helpful… which probably means they’ll continue. If multiple lurkers finally come forward to tell me they hate them, I might stop. The future is in your hands.
Finally… hopefully everyone reading has had a busy productive month. We’re 1/12 down for 2017 already. Let’s make February better.